


From The Case Files of Dr. Samuel Beckett - San Francisco, California – April 4, 1939

by kyburg



Category: Mary Russell - Laurie R. King, Quantum Leap
Genre: Al is the leaper, Crossovers are love, Gen, Glen Miller is a BAMF, San Francisco 1939 World's Fair, Silly String Theory, Swiss-Cheese Memory, Waiting Room, string theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:23:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyburg/pseuds/kyburg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leaping within Admiral Albert Calavicci's lifetime instead of Dr. Samuel Beckett's proves to be interesting, frightening and just plain astounding at times.</p>
<p>Like the one where Al leapt into the wife of Sherlock Holmes at the World's Fair in San Francisco, just before the start of World War II.  And neither of them could recall why they were there - but to be fair, Sherlock was in his eighties at that point.</p>
<p>And Mary was under the influence of a swiss-cheesed memory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From The Case Files of Dr. Samuel Beckett - San Francisco, California – April 4, 1939

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Twilight2000](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twilight2000/gifts).



> A most merry Yuletide to you! Thank you so much for the lovely requests - the only one we truly matched on was the Quantum Leap one, but I quickly found I didn't have the heart to write yet one more typical QL story and instead looked at the other things on your list and noticed you had asked for a Mary Russell story as well.
> 
> Well, why not. Cross the streams!

_Al is still leaping, and I don’t know how to stop it._

_Preliminary tests on the tachyon reverse half-gainer (hey, that’s why Gooshie called it, don’t blame me) left both of us scratching our heads today, not much better than last week’s charmed particle switcheroo thingie (it’ll take longer to explain than it’s worth, okay?), don’t look too closely at it, it didn’t work anyway._

_It just didn’t work, okay?_

_Al is still leaping within his own lifetime – a particularly brutal piece of history, I want it to be known, last leap’s prime feature was mock apple pie made out of lemon juice, sugar syrup and soda crackers in 1943 to save a roadside café from going under before its owner could return from the service and turn it into a whole string of roadside cafes, one for each of his children. Great outcome, everyone won._

_But listen to me very carefully here. **We made pies out of soda crackers** , only because I knew where someone had forgotten a storeroom full of the things, thank you Ziggy. Yippy skippy, saved the family business and everyone got a hot meal that day._

_Al said they even kinda tasted like apple pie, too. Said it was good. He even liked it._

_I wish I had felt the same. This whole thing was my fault, my risk to take, my job to finish – not Al’s. He should be home in bed – or doing whatever it was Al did when he wasn’t working with me, I never really wanted to know the intimate details if you want to be honest about it – free to choose, free to move ahead into his future._

_Instead of squirreling around, reliving his past – and not even his past. Everybody else’s past – unfiltered, uncensored and without any warning how bad it could get._

_Like that one trip down 1947 with the polio outbreak that almost killed Jonas Salk before he reached Pittsburgh to begin his research into the vaccine he shares the name for. Remember that one? Just a handful of leaps back, I know I documented it._

_Yeah, first time? Jonas Salk contracted polio and died of it before he could help find a vaccine for it. Beeks got on my case because I started looking at sugar cubes funny, can you blame me?_

_God, Time, Whatever? I want my job back. I want my job back right now._

_Help me bring Al home. Please._

###

The first thing Al noticed, and knew immediately he would never forget, was the sound of the music as he completed the jump and the world coalesced around him.

Glen Miller was leading a full eighty piece band, playing “Moonlight Serenade” _right in front of him._ Not in uniform, no – just a casual pair of pants and a white button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows as he kept time with a baton in one hand, directions with the other. They were playing in an outdoor, open-air band shell, watery but bright sunshine glinting off the brass horns, eyeglasses and silver fittings on the clarinets and flutes.

Al, for his part, was grateful to note he wasn’t wearing a dress but was wearing a gold band on his left hand as well as a delicate ladies watch around the wrist. Somehow, it was never difficult for him to know when he had leaped into a woman’s life and after the first half dozen or so, he’d managed to stop reacting first, holding very still until he discovered what kind of life he had fallen into. Most of the time, to his shame, he found himself on the receiving end of the very kind of unwelcome attention he’d made himself known for. 

This time, he was some man’s wife – valued, but not too much; female but not too feminine. She had been wearing pants, loose and comfortable with an equally nondescript shirt, vest and jacket over it. Neither the wedding ring or the watch was overly ornamental, more utilitarian and to the point, speaking to the need for them as functions, but not as adornments.

Then a large, gentle hand closed over Al’s hand, obscuring the watch, spotted with age but still firm and strong. Automatically tracking back up the arm attached to it, Al looked up into a man’s face watching him with piercing gray eyes, his nose a defining feature in his face, dividing it neatly in half and giving it a hawkish cast. It was a lean face, the eyebrows, eyelashes and hair snowy white where it peeked out from under a tweed cyclist’s cap neatly placed upon his head. 

“I’m so glad you suggested we rest here, my wife.” The voice was warm and full of interest, the British accent clear and pure, making the words sound almost sung instead of spoken. He was an old, old man, Al decided, a healthy, present mind in a very aged body. “He is a very able bandleader, isn’t he?” Shhh – we must make the most of this opportunity…my apologies.”

_I’m this man’s wife. Okay._

Looking down at the hands now joined over the space between the chairs they sat in, Al tried to place the age of his host, the wife of this man sitting next to him enjoying the music enrapt, the fingers of his other hand coming to tap against pursed lips. 

She was a younger woman, much younger. If she was forty, he would be surprised. But the spare jewelry was her only adornment, the very mannish clothing warm, the shoes thick, heavy walking shoes well-broken in if well maintained with polish and buffing.

Checking the surroundings, he saw that he was in a park with wide avenues, tall spires and statues, lined with trees and separated by gardens of flowers, shrubs and grass lawns. Banners flew from tall posts and it was only a moment before it became clear when and where he was.

Giving thanks for small favors on fluttering pennants, Al released the deep breath he had been holding in a sigh.

He was in San Francisco, it was 1939 and he was at the World’s Fair. _Who am I and what am I doing here?_

Al knew Sam would be along soon, he could only hope in one piece with good news, not a tale of dread and woe. Perhaps he was there to tell Glen Miller that was a GREAT song and not to trash it before sending it out into the world. Perhaps there was a tune he hadn’t put to paper yet he was uncertain of.

Perhaps he and this kind, intense old man next to him were here to see that nobody stole it.

_Now why would I think of a crime being committed, just sitting here?_

Miller and his band finished the tune, received the applause due them with grace and a winning smile before going back to the music stand to page through the score before deciding on the next song.

While he was doing so, however, a pair of figures approached him and _my husband, I guess_ on either side, young people well groomed but dressed in worn clothing as much of the crowd was. It was years and years into the Great Depression – very little was new and in good repair but the care put into what there was spoke volumes about their owners.

“Mr. Holmes! Didn’t expect to see you here today – what did you think? Isn’t Miller a genius?”

Noting they had spoken loud enough for the words to reach the bandmaster’s ears, a wry quirk of Miller’s lips giving it away, Al turned his attention back to the two young people who were now eagerly chatting about melodic lines, tempo and style. They were big fans, big.

The older man only smiled and nodded as the two younger people - a couple, man and a woman with a sameness about them that spoke of long association. Siblings, perhaps they were schoolmates? Ah, there were the matching class rings – not only college chums, perhaps they had been roommates as well? No, the year wouldn’t have allowed such a thing – but was one really one gender and not the other? Curious, but they knew…Mr. Holmes? _Sherlock Holmes_? The name came unbidden. The thought accompanied by the tickle Al had learned to trust over the leaps. This was what his host knew – and had left behind in the leap.

This man was named Sherlock Holmes – and as he scanned the three people now hurrying to settle themselves to listen as Miller raised his baton to begin another number, Al found himself examining the people around him, trying to discern what he could by deduction.

The lonely one by ones, mixed with families, some more affluent than others, some with motives clearly at odds with their attendance of this very pleasant afternoon’s entertainment. Some of them looking for a pocket to pick, some forgetting they had pockets that could be picked. Only a few were as genuinely interested in music as it played as _his husband_ and his acquaintances clearly were.

_Wait a minute. What am I doing?_

_I’m not a detective. Sherlock Holmes -_ Even as Swiss-cheesed as his memory had to be, Al remembered Sherlock Holmes had been one of the first – if not the first – consulting detective history could name, but he couldn’t remember when the man had died, or how. The knowledge came with that same little tickle – it could be, even more to the point – it was likely.

_This could be that man, sitting next to me, calling me wife._

And if his hunch – and the way his mind was working as he evaluated the crowd around him – played out, that wife was a detective on the same level as Holmes as well. Someone he had never heard of or about.

_Sam, where were you? I’ve got questions – and I gotta know the answers._

_If we’re here, then there has to be a reason. And if we’re a pair of exceptional detectives, what crime are we here to solve…or prevent from happening?_

_Sam. Sam, hurry._

And Glen Miller’s band played on, and on. Al did his best to appreciate it – what was left of Glen Miller leading, playing with his band in the 21st century?

A legacy, a body of work, recordings of the band playing without its leader after his loss during World War II, but very little of it actually of Miller himself.

And here he was, top of his game. Taking a deep breath, Al willed himself to relax. The answers would come in their own…time? The irony made him stifle a chuckle.

Sherlock Holmes was listening to Glen Miller play. _Come on, Calavicci – who else can say they’ve done this?_

The job did have its upside.

But, as his wife? Okay, _wife._

###

_I’ve initialized the projector in the Waiting Room. This is going to be one of those leaps the risk of mistaking the host for Al is too high, emotionally for the guest’s sanity. She is a very distinct, dominating presence of her own, announcing herself as Mary Russell, where she had been, what she had been doing…who she had been with. And then she hit a snag – the leap had impacted her ability to recall some of the details of her day._

_The moment her memory hit a hole, it derailed her completely. Some people often lose their train of thought or forget a name or a place…even struggle to find a word to complete a sentence to their satisfaction. Not this woman. She was not injured or sick – completely in her right mind, lucid and aware. But the leap has left its characteristic marks. The amazing part was that not only did she know there were holes, she had quickly defined their boundaries and depth before having to give in to the loss._

_For the first time in her life, she could not discern a memory completely or accurately, something she had been able to do just a moment before, and it was terrifying. She did not fall apart, though – just froze, working hard to compensate. Perhaps her hands shook a bit, but she only held them in her lap as she struggled to find the words to explain, to plead for an explanation I couldn’t give her – not completely._

_I was talking to someone with a mind like mine; I remembered Al reassuring me early on that I was brilliant, spoke twelve languages and four dead ones, had acquired more college degrees before my thirtieth birthday than anyone else that had come before me. My head had been so befuddled by that first leap, it hadn’t concerned me more than the minor annoyance that my own invention had created the situation I had then found myself in, stuck in a life and body not my own, struggling to discern the way out of my predicament._

_The projector overlays the image of the host over Al, allows us to interact with the guest without getting distracted by Al’s image there in front of us. Ziggy does her best but it’s a re-creation not an actual photographic record. I may peer beneath the projection to see how her emotions affect Al’s face, see if I can’t figure out if she is thinking her way through a hole, or if she is thinking her way through the case she had been working on when we so rudely interrupted her._

_The case she can’t remember._

_I’ve asked her many times if it’s possible there was no case. She only looks at me as if I’m mentally defective. Not lost my mind, no. She has, and she knows it. No, I’m in my right mind but I’m failing to use it properly, and it both frustrates and annoys her._

_She is the wife of Sherlock Holmes; of course, there is a case. There always has been._

_I’ve gone back to the records that exist for her husband; they largely end as the man entered his forties, records past his fifties non-existent. Right now, she’s on the cusp of her forties and her husband? In his eighties, and while I sense she is grateful, I don’t sense she is comfortable with that reality. She appears almost impatient, as if she resents the fact his age has finally impacted their lives together, the cases they can take on – and the ones they can’t. She’s beginning to outstrip him in every way that ever mattered, when once she enjoyed becoming his equal, finding him a challenge._

_That challenge, more than anything else, is what I think she misses most. The loss of the case she was working on, and the excellent companion her husband was only ten or fifteen years ago, that are both gone._

###

“Sam, he’s in his eighties. He’s not going to remember everything.”

Watching Sam put his chin in his hand, elbow cupped in the other, Al stood next to the sleeping figure of Sherlock Holmes. After the concert had ended, the two of them had casually ambled to a café where they had been served a meal, after which Holmes had pleaded fatigue and they had returned here to the hotel room where they were staying. By all reports and evidence, they were here to see the Fair…and nothing more.

“Al, I’m more concerned that he doesn’t remember anything – his wife is certain they were here to investigate a case.”

“But you’re not sure. And neither am I, kid.” Checking the old man – and this Al was very clear about – Sherlock Holmes was a very old man, alert and mindful but imprisoned in a body that was clearly failing him. “You tell me his wife is as quick as he is, and I’d have to agree that’s very possible…her habits have been very hard to break long enough for me to think straight, if you get my meaning.”

There was a chair next to the bed, he sat in it, twitching the covers up a fraction as he watched the husband of Mary Russell sleep. His color was good, but not great. He looked frail, paper-thin skin heavily mottled, the tendons and veins standing out in stark relief against wasted muscle, thin and yellowed. What hair he had was white, even his eyelashes were completely colorless.

“I can’t figure out what you’re here to do, Al. Even Ziggy seems to think this one is supposed to be some kind of vacation.”

Sighing, Al sat back and found his posture echoed Sam’s, hand coming up to cup his chin, tapping a finger against his chin. “Sam, do any records exist that say when Sherlock Holmes died?”

“None we can find.”

“Are there any records that mention Mary Russell?”

“None, other than the ones you’d expect of her birth in England. She disappears entirely from view during World War II. I can’t even tell if she died fighting with Resistance forces, caught in the Blitz – nothing. Otherwise we have a big fat air ball.”

“Then it isn’t a case, Sam. It’s him. Come on, look at him Sam – it won’t be long before this old guy just doesn’t wake up one morning. What is she going to regret when that happens?”

Sam only cocked his head, eyes narrowing. “You have anything to base that on?”

“It’s only a hunch. Something left behind by the leap.”

“She’s going to miss him – “

Waving it away, Al shook his head. “No, it’s more than that. Regret. She’s missing something here she is going to hold herself to task for later. She’s married a man much older than herself, she’s gotta know this day was coming – but I don’t get the impression just outliving him bothers her very much.”

“No – I’d have to agree. She’s a very independent lady, our Miss Russell is. I don’t think she even identifies herself as a wife, anyone’s wife as much as a partner, her own person.”

He couldn’t help but look again at the aged man sleeping, and then up at his own reflection in the mirror hanging on the wall. A woman just reaching the cusp of her middle years, mid-blond hair paired with blue eyes, glasses. “You keep saying things like that, Sam. I’ve kept my mouth shut most of the time, it’s safer to just nod and agree around Holmes, he doesn’t miss much.”

“We’ve held entire conversations in Latin – she loves having someone to talk to who can keep up with her. Al, she speaks Ancient Greek and she’s something of a theologian, too.”

“He’s not remembering everything anymore, Sam.” Watching Mary’s face in the mirror, Al felt something go thud inside him. “Ask her.”

“Her memory is not entirely complete right now, either Al – “

“And you’re telling me it’s terrifying her.”

“She won’t eat. She won’t sleep.”

“Bingo, if you ask me.” The sun was going down, painting the room in shades of rose and orange as it went. “Go talk to her again, Sam. Ask Ziggy.”

###

_I took in a carbon copy of the meal Al had eaten at that little café set up inside the Fair, hoping it would be something she would recognize, even prefer. She’d smiled at the tea, the sandwiches made with the crusts trimmed and largely spread with butter, a few leaves of endive making the filling. But she had little appetite, only drinking the tea._

_“Mary, I think we’re here to help you solve your case.”_

_“But as we’ve determined already, there is no case.”_

_“I think I might have been mistaken. There is a case. Memories have gone missing. Your husband no longer is your intellectual equal, and you’ve been trying to find a way to compensate - ”_

_“I have been an utter beast about it.” Her hands fell into her lap, her head thrown back as she pulled her lower lip in, biting it hard enough to bruise. “I have been impatient, angry and – terrible to someone who only wished me well all of the days we have known each other. And look at me now – in the same predicament, helpless to do anything about it._ **I can’t remember.”** __

_“It will pass, once you return home.”_

_“And I will remember nothing when I do.” Crossing her legs, one foot bobbed angrily as she thought. “Would you ask your friend to leave me a message, write it down in the journal I’ve set aside on the desk? Tell him to tell me…to remember to be kind. Yes. Yes, that should suffice._

_“I need to be reminded, in these days – days that will end when I least expect them to – that every moment may be the last I will recall with him. There will be no hole around the last time I speak with Holmes, no matter what the topic will be. Ask him.”_

_“I will, Mary. Will you sleep now?”_

_“I will do what needs must. Thank you, Doctor. You have been a good friend.”_

_“I’ll miss having someone to discuss Glen Miller’s musical style in Arabic, you know.”_

_I’ll remember her smile at that. She did sleep, and I did ask Al to write her that note – and it wasn’t five minutes once he finished, laying down on the bed next to Holmes to sleep himself that the leap occurred._

_Ziggy never did find out when Holmes passed or what happened to his intangible, obscured wife once she left the Waiting Room._

_I can’t recall a leap where the swiss-cheese effect was the active ingredient. She actually had to experience what it was like to be impaired to acquire the empathy to deal with her husband in the last years of his life._

_To be kind, I can only hope she found people to surround herself with as she grew older, because in my heart of hearts, I hope she was granted a long, happy life beyond the time she spent with her husband._

_Gooshie and I are going to spend the time we have while Al is leaping to trying the latest theory on the drawing board – he’s calling it the super-string, tying a knot in it and hoping for the best ploy._

_I just hope I wake up soon in a strange place, wearing a strange face if we can’t bring Al home._

_I want my job back. I want my job back now._

_-Beckett, out_

**Author's Note:**

> I certainly hope I didn't make too much of a botch of this - comments are always loved.


End file.
